(Taliban terrorists inside Kabul’s presidential palace on August 15th, 2021)
Five years ago this week, Kabul fell to the Taliban. Six months later Russia invaded Ukraine. In 2023, Iran unleashed its proxy Hamas to try to destroy Israel, causing the largest loss of Jewish lives in a single attack since the Holocaust.
Astonishingly, some thoughtful people still question whether this aggression has a bearing on the life of our city. In my view, it most certainly does. To make Toronto a city that works for everyone, we need to understand today’s large-scale conflicts and the channels by which they have had a significant impact on us.
On August 15th, 2021 the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan’s capital. They had ruled the country before – from 1996 to 2001. Before that, Afghanistan had been under Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1988, with a pro-Moscow government holding out until 1991, when its fall triggered five years of civil war.
Two decades of international support for Afghanistan (2001-21) under a full UN mandate followed 22 years of occupation, civil war and Taliban tyranny.
The second Taliban takeover in 2021 was swift, brutal and total. It drew a line under Afghanistan’s modern era of independence after August 19th, 1919. Prior to the Treaty of Rawalpindi, signed by Emir Amanullah Khan that day, Afghanistan was a British protectorate for 40 years. Today it is a Pakistani protectorate.
In the postwar era, it has been thankfully uncommon for an entire country to fall to an invading army — in this case sponsored by Pakistan. Over the past fifty years, three invasions — Indonesia’s of East Timor in 1975; Iraq’s of Kuwait in 1990; the US, UK and other allies’ of Iraq in 2003 — were all reversed. Only the fall of South to North Vietnam in 1975 was permanent.
Will the Taliban’s despotism endure? We must pray it does not. Only time will tell. Dictators fall. But liberation is not yet in prospect. Afghan women and girls remain barred from education and deprived of their most basic rights.
The fall of Afghanistan triggered more aggression. With US and NATO credibility massively dented, Moscow was emboldened to invade all of Ukraine. When that failed, with Russia incurring massive losses, the Kremlin begged its friends in Tehran and Hamas to launch attacks on Israel as a much-needed distraction.
What has this post-2021 wave of aggression meant for Toronto? When I started this campaign, one of my first events was with a group of Afghan Canadians at an Afghan restaurant in Scarborough. Many told me stories of leaving Afghanistan after August 15th, 2021. A few had been eyewitnesses to the Taliban takeover of Kabul, when they literally disbelieved until the last minute that the US and NATO would allow it to happen. A few had worked with me in the UN system.
